


my world is bleeding, fading, dying, (but somehow I'm still breathing)

by CharlotteDaBookworm



Series: Ardynson AU [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (Nyx does it anyway), (in the worst of ways), (or not - because I can quite literally make this worse), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Ardyn asks something of Nyx that will break him, Ardynson AU, Assisted Suicide, Begging, Circumventing a Prophecy, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Mercy Killing, Not A Fix-It, Nyx Ulric's Self Esteem, Patricide, Self-Blame, no happy ending, self-destructive thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 20:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20031922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteDaBookworm/pseuds/CharlotteDaBookworm
Summary: His father asks.His father asks, and Nyx has never been able to deny those he loves.His father asks, and Nyx says yes.(His father dies)





	my world is bleeding, fading, dying, (but somehow I'm still breathing)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own FFXV

* * *

He’s shaking, he realises abruptly.

He’s shaking.

His whole body is trembling, trembling like a newborn coeurl cub trying to take its first steps, and every breath he takes _shudders_ out of his lungs.

He feels sick.

And he can’t look away from his hands.

His hands that are shaking violently, uncontrollably. His hands, with familiar scars and callouses and lines but so _wrong_. His hands clenched around his – _his mother’s_ – blades, and he cannot tear his eyes away from the black-red that trickles down steel edges.

As he watches, it creeps down, onto his hands, warm-cold darkness stark against night-pale skin.

He gags.

Bile rises, quick and heavy, burning in his throat, and his hands fly frantically as he _flings_ his kukris away desperately. His heart racing with the need to be _away:_ away from the blades; away from the blood; away from the **proof**.

And he can’t-

He can’t-

He gags again, bitter iron heavy on his tongue, clinging to the back of his mouth, and wide eyes stare at the blood staining his hands.

He _can’t_-

He stumbles back a step. And then another. And then yet _another_ until he trips in his haste to flee – flee as fast and as far as he can, flee from the memories, flee from the truth of what he’s done – and lands on the cold stones with a heavy **t h u m p**.

_He can’t_-

“Nyx.”

His gaze jerks away from red_red**red**_. “Dad,” he chokes, he gasps, he sobs. And then he flinches away, away from his father for the first time in his life, away from the sight of his dad – always a towering, confident, loving figure – propped against a broken pillar, his hands held against his chest, a half-smile twisting his lips.

His eyes burn.

Ardyn looks him over with still-sharp eyes, his skin already visibly paling from blood loss; despite the darkness. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, voice soft and sad, _pained_.

Nyx hears it like it was screamed.

He jolts.

“**_No_**,” The word erupts out of him before he can think twice and it’s a demand, a desperate plea, a sob. It echoes around them, between them, this near scream – bouncing off of the cracked stone and wide halls and old bones. He sucks in a breath. “No,” he repeats, quieter but no less vehement. “_No_, dad, you don’t have anything to apologise for. You haven’t done anything.”

His father laughs, bitter and bloody and _tired_. “I asked you to kill me,” he says, and Nyx wheezes as all the air rushes out of his chest like he’s been hit with a truck. “It didn’t have to have been you, by all rights it should not have been you, and yet I asked _my son-”_

And, suddenly, he can’t breathe; his lungs frozen and his eyes burning and his hands shaking.

“You didn’t make me,” he manages to force out – the words stumbling on a tongue that weighed a ton – and his father laughs again but it’s the truth.

His father hadn’t made him do it, hadn’t done anything but ask and, despite what the man believed, he’d made it very clear that he could say no. His dad hadn’t forced him to do anything.

No, Nyx had forced himself.

Because his dad deserves this. He deserves _so much more_, but at the very least he deserves _this. _It’s the only thing he’s ever asked – that Nyx be there, that he be the one who… – and Nyx-

-Nyx has failed his father is so many ways; he wasn’t going to fail the man in this.

Even if all he can see now, every time he blinks, is his father’s unresisting form: is the blood that traces patterns on his hands; is his father’s soft smile and those thankful eyes and the way he just _crumples_. Even if the sound he made as the blade slid into his chest will haunt Nyx for the rest of his days.

Even if he’ll never again be able to think of his _dad_ without remembering him bloody and impaled on Nyx’s own blades. Even if it means that he’ll never be able to bring himself to pick up his mother’s kukris again.

Even if he has never wanted to do anything less.

Even if it’s broken him, like he knew it would.

“_Father_,” he breathes instead of telling him any of that, knowing that it will only hurt his father to hear. His tongue twists easily around the word, the Sol that he has been speaking for longer than he can remember, and Nyx smiles – sharp and trembling and full of the same horrible _aching_ grief that haunts his every breath, but a smile all the same. “I volunteered. Thank you for asking.”

Because there’s no one else that he trusts with this, with his _father_, with this duty, and the thought of it being someone – _anyone_ – else, of someone else being here with his father now, _like this_, sickens him far more than the blood that stains his hands does.

So, he’s thankful.

No matter how much this hurts.

His dad shakes his head, something dark flitting through his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says again, his lips moving as though to say more, but then he coughs harshly until what little colour remains in his face is draining away.

Blood speckles his lips.

Nyx is at his side in an instant, shaking hands slotting over his dads and pressing _down_. Fresh blood pores over them and he fights back the urge to pull away, to gag, to run.

“I’m sorry,” slips out and he snaps his mouth shut, keeping the rest of his desperate words behind his teeth. _I’m sorry, I love you, please don’t go, please dad, I can’t lose you, please don’t leave me, please, please, please, **dad**_.

His fingers curl helplessly in his father’s coat – like he’d done as a child, still small enough to be carried, seeking the easy comfort of his father that is absent now – and he fights back the urge to beg, his eyes burning with tears as he clings at that onslaught of words that he wouldn’t say.

“I love you so much dad,” he gasps out instead, anxious for his father to be certain of that, now. Before it’s too late.

Another sob catches in his throat, hitching his breath.

He forces it away.

His father smiles, bright and sad, guilty and relieved, achingly young and heartbreakingly old. His father smiles and it’s full of all the love that Nyx has known his entire life. His father smiles and it’s _tired_. “And I love you, starshine.”

He coughs, again, more violently – body-shaking, chest-heaving, throat-tearing, lung-hacking coughs – and the blood that flies from his lips sparkles red, and just red, in the light of the moon. He coughs, and he coughs, and he coughs until he’s wheezing, until every single breath is a fight, and then it all just.

Stops.

In an instant, his whole body relaxes, and he reaches out with a surprisingly steady hand, his cold fingers brushing clumsily against his face.

Nyx catches them there, holding them close, clutching them tight, and he’s unable to look away as his father’s eyes begin to glaze over, as his breaths grow shallower and shallower.

Tears he can’t stop anymore tumble down his face.

“Thank you_,”_ his dad mouths, just a minuscule movement of his lips, and his fingers tighten briefly on Nyx’s before it’s gone. His eyes slip closed.

Nyx sobs.

His hands fisted in his dad’s coat, Nyx clutches him close and _sobs_.

“_don’t go, don’t go, don’t go_,” he sobs senselessly under his breath and, far above them, the heavens open – the sky itself sobbing with him. _“Dad, daddy, please don’t go, please don’t leave me, I’m sorry, I love you, please,” _he begs but he knows – sure as he can feel the newly formed chasm in his chest, sure as he can sense the magic of the earth beneath his feet, sure as he can smell a storm on the horizon – that begging will make no difference.

Because his father is dead.

Nyx begs anyway, pleading with anyone who will listen to _bring him back, please, I’ll do anything, please he’s my dad, bring him back._

He begs and he pleads and he cries, clutching at his father as – atom by atom – the man once called Sage, once called Accursed, once named Chancellor and King, but most importantly called _father,_ dissolves into light.

Far above them, the sun rises.

Nyx sobs.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> so, people from tumblr might recognise this as a rewrite of something that I posted there a long while back that I like to call my tragic ending verse
> 
> have fun :D
> 
> (If people want tags added, just tell me, it's late right now and I'm probably missing a couple)


End file.
